


Desire

by lydiamrtin



Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Codependency, Drug Addiction, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Season/Series 04, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, basically lorna and nicky try to figure out their shit together, canon up until nicky gets back from max
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-07-21 21:53:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7406341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lydiamrtin/pseuds/lydiamrtin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having recently fallen off the wagon, Nicky returns to litchfield to a married Lorna. The more she tries to convince herself she isn't still in love with Lorna, the harder she finds it to stay away from her</p><p>*Set a little after Nicky gets out of max. This story diverges from canon shortly after she, Alex, and Piper smoke crack in the cornfield*</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“C’mon, baby,  _ please,” _ that low, gravelly voice drawls in her ear as her hands wander lower down her waist. 

“Don’t tell me that after all this time, you never missed me. Because I  _ sure _ missed you . . .” Her fingers grapple at Lorna’s sides and she leans in, not at the lips,  _ never _ the lips, but her neck, and she breathes in Lorna’s familiar scent. The sickly sweetness of it makes her dizzy.

Lorna squeezes her eyes shut, wincing, and with all the willpower she can muster she grabs Nicky’s arms and pushes her off her. She’s never heard Nicky talk like that; Nicky never begs, ever, not even when Lorna’d have her way with her against the temple in the chapel and she’d come screaming Lorna’s name. 

Nicky refrains from advancing at her again, but instead leans her weight on the bathroom counter and wipes a trail of sweat off her forehead. It strikes Lorna odd that she didn’t notice it earlier. She stands up tall, takes a deep breath, and steps towards Nicky. 

“Nicky, I can’t, you  _ know  _ I can’t. I’m a married woman now,  _ married. _ I made him a promise, and I can’t cheat on him because I know he isn’t cheating on me.” 

“Yeah, I’m sure the abysmally long remainder of your sentence is gonna be  _ real _ easy on him, huh?” Nicky retorts, her narrowed, glaring eyes having long lost the mischievous glint they once held. 

“Come on, Lorna. Who are we kidding?” she chuckles. “He’s probably fucking his cousin’s secretary as we speak-”

“YOU shut up!” Lorna growls as she pushes Nicky backwards. 

“And you listen to me. Vincent is a good man. I’m not doing this to him.” Lorna vigorously shakes her head, suddenly unsure whether she’s trying to convince Nicky or herself. 

_ “C’mon,” _ Nicky breathes, placing her hands on Lorna’s shoulders and rubbing them soothingly. 

“He never has to know. It can be our secret. No one else in here has to know . . . Tell me you didn’t think about me while I was gone,” her lips curl up in a cocky grin but it refuses to reach her eyes. Her smirk is playful but her tone is not. 

“Course I thought about you. I already told you, I was worried about you . . .” Lorna notices Nicky’s restless figure, the way she can’t seem to keep her hands still-  _ “am _ worried about you.”

Nicky shakes her head and stares up at the ceiling, throwing her arms at her sides in agitation. “I’m fine,” she snaps. “But enough about me. Let’s . . .” She reaches out towards Lorna and starts walking her back toward the wall- “take care of you.” 

“No, Nicky,  _ no.” _ Lorna, more forcefully this time, yanks Nicky’s arms and throws her off. 

“I have Vince now; you  _ know _ this. I’m  _ married. _ You know, some of us have futures to think about when we get out of here.” 

Nicky gawks at her.  _ “Excuse _ me?” she barks incredulously. 

“You heard me,” says Lorna calmly, suddenly cold, colder than Nicky has ever seen her. “I said,  _ some _ of us have to think farther along ahead than our next high.”

Nicky glowers at her. “I have been sober. For  _ three _ fucking years. Maybe if you weren’t so caught up in trying to maintain your fake engagement with Christopher, you would’ve-”

_ “Bullshit _ you’ve been sober for  _ three fucking years, _ Nichols, look at yourself! You wanna talk about fantasies? Wanna talk about that fantasy of yours called sobriety? You’re sweating and shaking right now. Wanna tell me again that you haven’t been using?  _ That’s _ what got you sent down to max in the first place.”

Lorna’s angry, livid, even, but she corrects her posture, and before Nicky can even open her mouth to defend herself, to tell Lorna that she  _ didn’t _ use before going down to max and that Luschek framed her for that bag down in electrical, Lorna’s off again.

“You can’t have me, Nichols. You can never have me again, and it’s  _ your _ fault. When you were in max, I didn’t think you were coming back.  _ No one _ thought you were coming back, so don’t you  _ dare  _ get onto me for finding someone when you made it perfectly clear that you love heroin more than you loved me.” 

That bag was Nicky’s. The whole reason any of the heroin was down in electrical at all is because she was reluctant to give it all up, and so she stole it from Boo. She was still clean at that point in time, but it was a war in her mind. She convinced herself she could make the decision on her own, and so decided to sell it all with Luschek instead of going straight to Red. Now every time she looks at Red, she wants to melt in shame because all of this could have been avoided had she just listened to her. She never fucking listens . . . 

It was Red who held back Nicky’s hair when she puked, not Lorna. Lorna didn’t come along until after her detox, but one glance at those ruby red lips and glassy eyes and slender figure and Nicky wanted. Boy, she wanted. . . And when she wants something, she gets it. 

Sex was the extent of it, for a while, until the first time Lorna mentioned Christopher’s name it hit Nicky with a wave of something she couldn’t immediately define. Before Lorna, Nicky hadn’t considered the concept of jealousy as apart of her emotional spectrum. 

While they were sleeping together, Nicky always thought that Lorna only saw her as an addict attempting to convert her heroin cravings to sex cravings. Because that’s who Nicky is; she quickly develops compulsive attachments to things. Medium ground is foreign terrain to her. She doesn’t know gray. She never has. 

It may be easy for Nicky to convince herself that she wasn’t going to use the contents of that bag, but who’s she kidding? Of course she was. She was only thrown in max before she had the chance to rip open not only the bag but the seams of her already delicate timeline of attempted sobriety. 

Lorna has a dream, of a husband and children and a white picket fence. Nicky can’t give that to her, not even close. Of course that board she made Lorna wasn’t a joke; at the time she was naive enough to think that maybe, just maybe, Lorna would consider betraying her conventional values.

She feels tears stinging at the back of her eyes, but she restrains herself because no one, especially not Lorna, can see her weak. Of course Lorna found somebody. She deserves someone who doesn’t develop pathological dependencies on other people or things. Lorna has her own problems; she certainly isn’t mentally stable enough to sustain a codependent relationship, and if Nicky is being honest with herself, neither is she. 

“Alright.” Nicky throws her hands up and then slaps them back down. 

“I get it.” She runs them through her wild, unkempt hair, and for a second imagines they’re Lorna’s, just one last time. 

“I’ll just- I’ll see ya round, kid, okay?” 

Lorna stares at her, not angrily, almost . . . sadly? Then she nods slowly. 

Nicky perseveres, each step walking away from Lorna feeling like another boulder being strapped to her ankle. She almost turns around to look back at her but resists. She’s given into enough of her temptations as of late. She quickens her pace, until she’s out of the bathroom and back inside her bunk reaching for her radio and headphones while furiously wiping tears from her eyes. She fumbles under her mattress and comes into contact with the small bag Angie traded her, hesitating for just a split second before pulling it out and slipping it in her shirt pocket. She quickly exits the dorm and passively ignores the looks people give her. She knows she has work, but she also knows that Luschek is too lazy of a human being to hunt her down and send her to SHU and would instead settle for merely writing her a shot, so she heads on over to the chapel, one of her and Lorna’s old favorite spots. 

Thankfully, no sermons are being held (surprisingly enough, the chapel is used on occasion for other things besides lesbian sex). So she sits back, turns up her music all the way, and forgets for a while. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please drop a comment!! Thinking of continuing this, should I?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lmao in both my oitnb fanfics i've alluded to lorna's passive racism i hate myself

 

 

Nicky comes to in one of the first rows of the chapel. She’s slumped in a chair and her feet are kicked up on the back of the chair in front of her. She blinks slowly to focus her vision and sees Alex Vause standing over her, firmly hitting her shoulders and calling her name, her normally arched eyebrows furrowed in concern. 

“Whadaya want?” Nicky slurs, closing her eyes and rubbing her pulsing temples. 

“You weren’t breathing,” Alex says as if that explains it all. “I was this close to grabbing a CO to take you down to medical, and we both know how fucked you would’ve been.” 

Nicky rolls her eyes and straightens her posture. “Thanks, Vause. You’re my true hero,” she spits sarcastically. 

“You know, you should be grateful I found you before a guard came in here,” Alex asserts irritably before sighing and softening her tone. 

“I saw you in the dorms earlier, and you looked pretty distressed. I figured if you weren’t at work, you’d be here.” 

“And there you have it; c’mon, take a seat, Vause,” Nicky sighs, patting the spot next to her. 

“How are you doing?” she asks. 

Alex shakes her head, pinching the bridge of her nose. 

“If I’m being honest? Terrible. I can’t sleep at night. And I’m pretty sure I’m suffering from untreated PTSD . . . But I’m handling it.”

Nicky stares. 

“You’re  _ handling _ it? Don’t think I’ve never heard that one before, Vause. I’m the  _ queen _ of ‘handling it’.”

Alex nods in agreement. Nicky lost count a long time ago how many times she convinced herself she was “handling” something. 

“So I don’t know how much this’ll help because I’ve never killed someone before, but if for some reason they find the body and start an investigation, wouldn’t they just trace it back to Whitehill?”

“And then what’ll happen when she confesses that she was saving  _ my _ life from a hitman that was sent in to kill  _ me?” _

“Doesn’t matter. They can’t prove you were involved.”

“They could trace his background. Find him connected to the same people I was. Nicky, if anyone finds out about this, I’m fucked.” 

She sighs, stretching in her chair, before looking Nicky up and down.

“So, uh . . . Are you gonna explain?”

Nicky plays dumb. “What?”

“You know what. Why I found you half dead in here and not at work.”

Nicky laughs. “Relax, Vause, I wasn’t half dead. I just needed some . . . space for a while. It’ll be the last time for a long time, though, because I’ll probably get my ass thrown in SHU if I get another shot for skipping work.”

“You weren’t breathing, Nicky. I’m pretty sure that qualifies as at least half dead.”

Alex eyes the bag sticking out of her pocket. “That’s not the only thing you needed, apparently.”

Nicky looks down. “Shit,” she sighs, stuffing it down. “Okay, look, this isn’t what- It’s just . . . Alright. Listen. I’m keeping it under control this time. Really. I’m h-”

“Handling it?” Alex gives her a knowing look. 

Nicky shakes her head, agitated. “You don’t think I didn’t learn my lesson last time?”

“Well, it doesn’t seem like it to me,” Alex quips. “Did you buy from those meth head hicks again?” 

Nicky’s silence answers the question. 

“Are you fucking serious? The same ones that ratted you out in the first place?”

“Well, this time,  _ they’ve _ got the shit, and  _ I _ have the power to snitch on them if I so choose to,” Nicky explains as if that’s any validation to her current situation. 

Alex only looks at her. 

Nicky’s frustration grows. 

“Vause, c’mon, alright? Level with me here. I’m keeping it lowkey.”

Alex scoffs. “You don’t do lowkey.” 

Nicky purses her lips and runs a hand through her hair. “Fine. Let’s say I completely fall off the wagon. Be straight with me for a second. In the grand scheme of things, what else have I got to lose?”

It’s meant to be asked as a challenge, and Alex takes it as such. 

Nicky’s eyebrows furrow to garnish the delivery. 

Alex shakes her head at her. 

“I know this might come as a bit of a surprise to you, considering that your judgement’s completely clouded by all this . . . cynical, self-loathing  _ bullshit, _ but believe it or not, you actually have people in here who care about you.” 

_ “Actually? _ And you don’t?” Nicky asks condescendingly. 

“You have Red, and she’s never gonna leave you, even when she gets out.”

“You don’t know that,” says Nicky, suddenly uncomfortable. “And what, you honestly think Chapman’s gonna leave you high and dry when you get out?”

Alex chuckles bitterly. 

“Piper’s abandoned me when I’ve needed her before, more than once, and she can do it again. Besides, when we’re locked up in here together, we always see each other. We’re trapped here together. On the outside, we won’t have anything keeping us together if we don’t want to be. Some girls in here . . . People make friends here to survive, Nichols. But when it really comes down to it, most of these girls don’t have anyone. So next time you think about poisoning your body, just remember that you’re not the only one it’ll affect.” 

“Christ . . .” Nicky laughs hoarsely. “The ex pimp giving the addict a drug speech. Talk about fucking irony.” 

Alex can’t help but laugh at that. “C’mon,” she says, standing up and holding out a hand to help Nicky up. 

“We’re gonna be late for count.” 

…

“Chapman, you really don’t look so good. Maybe you should go down to medical,” says Lorna at dinner, eyeing Piper’s bloody sleeve with concern. 

Piper pokes at her arm tenderly before looking up at Lorna. 

“And tell them what? That I got branded by the Spanish girls after I turned in Maria, and then we altered the branding to turn it into a window? Assuming they overlook the fact that I basically confessed to self harm and instead try to punish the people who branded me, there wouldn’t be any proof; it would only cause everyone more trouble.” 

“Well, maybe they should’ve thought of that before marking you up,” says Lorna, nodding defiantly. 

Alex chuckles. “Holy shit, I almost forgot. Lorna’s a passive racist. Of course she thinks their actions were inequitable.” 

Piper raises her eyebrows and points at her. “Red’s word of the day calendar?” 

“Mhm,” Alex replies. 

“There’s nothing you can do about it now, kid. You can’t un-frame the Dominican,” Nicky chimes in. 

“This wasn’t the kind of person I was supposed to become; this isn’t  _ me,”  _ says Piper with distress. 

“We’ve been over this; we know you feel bad,” sighs Nicky, trying her best to be gentle. “But you can’t keep dwelling on it. You gotta move forward.”

“Well, moderately,” amends Alex. “That scar’s not fading anytime soon; it’s not just going to leave your mind. You need to use it as a mnemonic to stay out of other people’s shit. Just . . . Lie low for a while.” 

“That’d be an interesting change,” chuckles Nicky, followed by laughter from Lorna. It shouldn’t make her feel as warm inside as it does that Lorna laughed at her wit. 

“Fuck you, Nichols,” says Piper exasperatedly. “Says the girl who made  _ quite _ a show when she got carted off to max 3 months ago.”

That comment fills Nicky with white-hot anger. 

“You don’t know what it’s like down there, so don’t fucking joke about that,” she seethes, leaning forward across the table, but Lorna yanks her arm and pulls her back down. 

“Shh, Nicky, don’t  _ do _ that,” Lorna urges. 

Nicky shakes her grip off. Maybe she’s imagining it, but she could’ve sworn that Lorna looked slightly hurt for a second. 

“Guys, calm down,” Alex pleads, running her hands up the sides of her hair, a habit Nicky, ever since her return from max, often noticed her doing. 

“I can’t deal with any more shit right now.” 

Piper sighs. “I’m sorry, Nicky. I didn’t mean to make light of what happened to you. But I want it to be made perfectly clear that I  _ will _ defend my intentions against Maria and her girls.” 

“Intentions?” Nicky scoffs incredulously. “Chapman, wake up and smell the  _ blood _ on your arm. Intentions don’t mean  _ shit. _ Maria has more time, and it doesn’t matter whether you  _ intended _ that to happen, because that’s the reality. We’ve already been through this.” 

“Hey, be nice, she’s had a tough couple of days,” Lorna admonishes her.

“She brought it upon herself.” 

“Hey,” Alex warned, furrowing her brow. 

“What gives, Vause? Why are you all of a sudden her big defender? I’m sorry, Chapman, but you’re a part of the reason she got herself stuck in her current situation.” 

“Actually, to be fair,  _ she’s _ the  _ entire _ reason _ I  _ got myself stuck in  _ this-”  _ Piper gestures to the air around her- “current situation,” she retaliates sharply.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, you know exactly why I named you. Don’t even try pulling that shit with me,” Alex sneers. 

Piper slams her hand down on the table. “I  _ know _ that I ignored her when she needed me.  _ I know _ I turned her away when she was in danger. I know I mocked her, called her paranoid, when I should have listened. I know that, Nicky. So I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t insist on rubbing it in my face when god knows you’re the farthest thing from perfect.” 

Nicky’s eyes widen, and she opens her mouth, but Piper perseveres, “If you wanna call other people out on their shit, then you better be willing to take it when someone decides to do the same to you.” 

She picks up her tray and storms off without another word. 

Nicky’s still in shock.  _ “Damn, _ Chapman,” she exclaims, unable to suppress her chuckles. Then she turns to Alex. 

_ “Please _ start fucking her again,” she says, all too aware that Alex once said the same thing to her about Lorna shortly after they ended their fling. 

Alex bursts into laughter. 

“That,” she responds, “is a disaster waiting to happen.” 

Lorna sniggers behind her painted nails. 

“You were kinda provoking her, though,” she adds. “What’s been with you lately?”

“Nothing’s been  _ with _ me,” Nicky says defensively, gritting her teeth. “Actually . . .” She gazes off as if deep in thought. 

“It’s more what  _ hasn’t _ been with me.” She looks straight at Lorna. 

Alex looks away, knowing all too well what Nicky’s implying. 

Lorna tilts her head and just looks at her. 

“Would it kill you to have some decency?” she asks irritably. “Just a little bit.”

Nicky smirks, licking her lips and scooting closer to Lorna. 

“Then I wouldn’t be me, baby.” 

“Christ, keep it PG-13, please,” Alex grumbles, shaking her head. 

“Ah, c’mon, I know she’s married,” Nicky replies, more scorn in her tone than intended. 

“To Vincent Muccio,” Lorna finishes as if she hasn’t already broadcast his name to the entire prison fifteen hundred times. 

“You know what?” Nicky starts, twirling a curl in her hair. “I think I’d like to meet this Vincent Muccio.”

Lorna looks uncomfortable. She starts fidgeting. “Uh . . . I don’t think that would be-” 

“I mean, if you married him, he must be a keeper,” Nicky interrupts, tone dripping in sarcasm. 

“But, I still wanna meet him, just to make sure he’s the right guy.”

“He  _ is _ the right guy, Nicky,” Lorna says. “He’s the one.” 

“You don’t know he’s the one until he meets important people in your life,” argues Nicky. 

Lorna is suddenly whisked back to the time she and her sister were talking about Christopher, and how it escalated into this exact conversation. How she didn’t want to bring him home, and how Frannie said that she couldn’t be sure he was the one until he met the family. 

Something inside Lorna snaps. 

“Don’t fucking do that,” she snarls, gathering everything on her tray, picking it up, and stomping off. 

Nicky throws her hands up, gesturing to Lorna before turning her attention back to Alex and widening her eyes in genuine shock. 

“What the fuck did I say?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took FOREVER to post! I've been super busy, and rewatching season 4 has refueled my desire for nichorello to become canon so thus this chapter was born. I'm hoping to update more regularly from here on out, but that's not a promise. I'll do the best I can! Please feel free to drop a comment, I love feedback :)  
> And in the mean time, keep up with me on [tumblr](http://nickymorello.tumblr.com)  
> 


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